US-Russia relations improving – White House

WASHINGTON, The United States of America – Washington has claimed that US-Russian relations have improved in the past several months while US President Donald Trump continues to seek areas of cooperation, a senior White House official said.

“The president [Trump] spoke to president Putin on the phone and we issued a readout summarizing the call,” the briefing’s host said.

“This is a great example of cooperation when there is a shared interest. We’ve seen some of that also this year in Syria against ISIS,” he said.

“But we still see a lot of areas where our interests either don’t align or directly conflict,” he added.

Nevertheless, in his words, “we’re certainly better off right now then we were several months ago when both the secretary of state and the president marked that the relationship seemed to be at a low point.”

According to the White House, the US president “is focused on continuing to find areas of cooperation where they can be found while being ever vigilant at protecting America’s interests.”

Paul Antonopoulos is a Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies. He has an MA in International Relations and is interested in Great Power Rivalry as well as the International Relations and Political Economy of the Middle East and Latin America.